Book Reviews

Review of Sharon Kay Penman, Devil’s Brood (New York: Marian Wood, 2008), 736 pp.

Review Author: Katherine McLoone

If you’re a medievalist, then you have probably either fallen in love with the books of Sharon Kay Penman, or haven’t heard of her yet (and now you officially don’t have that excuse). Penman has been delighting medieval scholars, aficionados, and dilettantes since her novelization of Richard III, The Sunne in Splendour, came out in 1982. Since then she has tackled Simon de Montfort and Henry III, King John and the conquest of Wales, and the war of succession between Empress Maude and Stephen. She’s also penned four medieval mystery novels: slimmer fare than the more historical tomes, but entertaining nonetheless.

It’s the English war of succession—or more precisely, the aftermath of Henry I’s death in the wake of the tragedy of the White Ship, in which nearly all of his viable male heirs perished—that starts off the trilogy of which Devil’s Brood is the final part (more on that later). When Christ and His Saints Slept (the title is taken from the Peterborough Chronicles) details the bloody and anarchic civil war between Henry’s daughter, the Empress Maude, who was married to the Holy Roman Emperor, but was remarried to a wily Angevin duke who leant the Plantagenet dynasty their moniker, and her cousin the usurper Stephen.

Sounds confusing? It gets worse. While Stephen eventually gains the throne, provisions are made for Maude’s son Henry to inherit after the king’s death. This is the young Henry who becomes Henry II, the most powerful European ruler since Charlemagne, and husband to Eleanor of Aquitaine. His rise to the throne, the annulment of her marriage to the French King Louis Capet, and their passionate and powerful marriage take place in Time and Chance. Both When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance also follow Ranulf, a (fictional) bastard son of Henry I who finds love and purpose in Wales, which, as in all Penman’s novels, provides a complex backdrop of divided family loyalties, minor forays into the art of medieval guerilla warfare, and evidence of the author’s abiding love for that remote and mysterious land.

Both novels cover one of the most complex and confusing periods in English monarchical history. But Penman humanizes the historical with bodice-ripping love affairs, dialogue that sounds just archaic enough, and touching portraits of the characters and personages involved. She is a stickler for historical detail: she openly acknowledges Ranulf’s fictionality in her postscripts to both books, but takes very few other liberties. It’s a measure of her skill, however, that Ranulf and his adventures fit seamlessly into the larger narratives of power, betrayal, war, and lust. Penman’s books make you care about the characters as vibrant literary beings, not just names on the roster of the powerful and mighty in English history.

And Devil’s Brood? Not so much. Although it’s being marketed as the final book in the Henry II and Eleanor trilogy, Penman’s Author Note makes clear that she will continue the story in her next novel—and perhaps that’s the explanation for the oddly transitional feeling of the entire story. Devil’s Brood begins after Eleanor’s discovery of Henry’s affair with Rosamund Clifford, and moves swiftly to the rebellion of the young King Henry (called Hal to avoid ambiguity), Richard (soon the be the Lionhearted), Geoffrey their brother, and Eleanor herself against Henry, who made the mistake of having his son crowned in his own lifetime and then treating him like a child.

Hal’s rebellion, Richard’s fixation with his inheritance the duchy of Aquitaine, Geoffrey’s insouciance, and even young John Lackland’s affectation of emotional distance—they all recall the nuanced character sketches of the previous two books in the trilogy. Eleanor’s imprisonment by Henry, and the toll it takes on their marriage and his kingdom, is also finely drawn. But at 736 pages, the book spends too long listing battles and sieges, detailing the shifting loyalties of pesky barons who seem important for a moment and then drop away, and reporting the numerous oaths made and broken by Henry’s sons. Between touching moments, as when Richard bites his lip in a moment of self-doubt, or Henry loses control and flings a flagon into the fire, are long periods of what amounts to a modern chronicle: a partisan retelling of rather dry facts best gleaned from a detailed timeline.

Penman is reduced, throughout, to finding novel ways of speedily reporting the shifting allegiances of…well, just about everyone. She makes frequent use of what we could term “the gossip scene,” in which someone, usually a woman, comes to the imprisoned Eleanor and catches her up on who is fighting, who is losing, and who is dying. The “reported letter scene” is frequent, as well: there are very few actual epistles in the story (a sign, perhaps, of her desire to remain faithful but still readable for a general audience), but many characters receive missives and then summarize them to a group of friends. The information they report is usually the same, with a few variations: one of Henry’s sons has rebelled or formed a misalliance with a continental power and chaos has ensued. It’s a repetitious period of history, and repetition does not a great novel make.

The beloved Ranulf of the previous two books makes a few token appearances, but he is old and rebellion is for the young. In lieu of a romance-style adventure such as his, Penman spends some time detailing the marriage of Geoffrey, Henry II’s third son, and Constance of Brittany. Their love, and their love of scheming, make them the most interesting characters in the book; history, however, has relegated them to the sidelines: Geoffrey died young, and was only important in Brittany, not England, Normandy, Anjou, or Aquitaine. Indeed, the entire book lacks a central passionate love affair of any kind, for the gradual reconciliation of Eleanor and Henry is, simply put, too gradual. For entire chapters Eleanor herself fades away, relegated to Sarum in England while her family fights, makes up, and fights again on the continent. Imprisonment seems to take its toll not just on Eleanor, but all of the drama that surrounded her tumultuous marriage to the dynamic king: only at his death, at the end of the book, does the tale start to feel as alive as the two novels that preceded it.